We are a caster heavy group so we kind of lack the constant cleave dmg melee normally provides.

What my guild does is to have 1 or 2 (second dps is is on empowered only if needed) on the empowered and the rest on Sul. We do however all change targets when troll that jumps constantly gets the empower because of his reflect.

However since 25% HP is allot for a single person I do help out with the empowered even if I'm not on empowered duty, by using havoc on cooldown.

Sorry but this is just meter padding. You aren't really doing useful dps by attacking all of the trolls, you may get a extra shard but from corruption ticks but that's clearly not your goal.

Having Sul dead before he gets his buff is more important then anything else (at least on normal) because once you get the first troll down the fight itself will be much easier (less shit going on). But since your attacking mobs that don't have the empowered your not really contributing to the fast kill and I would even go as far as to say that your holding back the raid even.

To make it clear, dps on a non empowered troll won't make the difference between a kill and a wipe. You're dps may be higher but you will be holding back the raid because you aren't killing the priority target faster (your killing the trolls slower even).

There's NOTHING meter padding about doing what you're being brought for: max dps. How you can argue that taking down HP from bosses that need to die is in any form or way useless is beyond me. "Doesn't make the differnece between a wipe and a kill?" well clearly if you're not chaincasting at this level likely it won't make the difference between a kill and a wipe either - but it makes it a hell of a lot easier if everyone's playing their classes properly no? If you're not multidotting, almost in all cases you're simply doing it wrong, and you can argue high and low but that's how it is - you're being brought for your dps capabilities and to do that, you WILL be multidotting, there's other classes much better suited to burn down a single dude on that fight than you are, heck an ele shaman would be better off being brought than you just because of their raid cooldowns, knockbacks, etc. Look at any top guild warlock even 10man and how they do it. If your overall dps is so lacking that you cannot kill Sul before he empowers (why is that necessary anyway? It's about the only moment where healers would have to press a button), then you simply have no place within the raid. On our heroic kill ages ago when we were undergeared I willingly sat out because our dps was overall too low to kill our primary target before empowering, therefore I no longer had an useful role in the raid and we were MUCH better off replacing me with someone who actually brought something useful to the raid - in this case we brought in someone who had a gazillion of useful tools that I could not offer there. Now with the gear we could probably easily do it and again I'd have an useful place in the raid. Use classes to their potential, and don't twist them around just to suit some tactic. That said, he's destro, and multidotting / rof on as many targets as possible WILL in fact undeniably increase his singletarget dps, so this discussion is kinda moot.

Meter padding is when you're LOSING useful dps to do ghost dps. Like rogues bladeflurrying council in toes. Yes, that's crap and useless. There's nothing useless about bringing bosses HP down, like rogue bladeflurrying on council in ToT. That's what he's best at, this kind of cleave, why would you have him in if not for that on this fight?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I'm assuming from armory this is normal mode. How we do normal is we bunch all bosses up, /care about the healing adds, cleave the hell out of them and profit. I'm healing those runs and I always HOPE we get sul empowered because there's nothing to heal otherwise... We do this on our shitty alts too, so maybe that's an idea. Honestly, the panic about sul is a bit over the top. He's really not that scary and it will take a lot of stress off your raid.

As for your lock's dps. There can be so much wrong. No multidotting would be one thing - and by the way, he should be draining/shadowburning the add at least for shards/embers by the way. But just playing random, not paying attention to procs, that's why most shitty warlocks are shitty. That's not something you fix overnight. That said, gearlevel doesn't say much. If his trinkets and weapons are crap, or has no setbonuses, he will be doing shit dps even if he has heroic shoulders, you know. Regardless, he should be doing more than he's doing. It's kinda hard to fix from here without seeing him play or anything, but lets give some general pointers:

- Rain of Fire; make sure he keeps this up on as many targets at the same time, but even if there's only one it should always be up. He needs to find a way to track RoF, as there's no UI function for this in default UI. So if there's two targets bunched up even if Sul is somewhere in Tokyo, he puts Rof on those two targets, to maximize ember generation.
- ABC. Always Be Casting, probably the biggest reason why casters have issues with dps (and melee too, really, think of those rets who take coffee breaks between their crusader strike and their exorcism proc): most often this manifests when you change spells: incinerate spam goes fine, then suddenly he has to switch and cast chaos bolt and by the time he found his button a second came by and went (this is not an issue exclusive to clickers by the way). Do that the entire fight and your dps will be crap.
- Fire and brimstone. If bosses are hugged up as they should, except if you really wanna do it properly the priestess, fire and brimstone at least those immolates (though yes I'd even say fire and brimstone a lot more than just that... :P). It gives shitloads of embers, and he can just spam chaos bolts away on Sul. Havoc another boss and incinerate away for more embers (or, gasp, chaos bolt to khazra for example, but maybe that's meter padding too... ). He must always maximize the ember generation for maximum (singletarget) dps.
- And lastly, use those chaos bolts only when he has a sexy proc or when he's about to cap embers. He has two half decent trinkets, make sure those bolts are at least aligned with those or with dark soul. That said, let him get Jade Spirit. Windsong is so incredibly crap compared to that. It's expensive but surely your guild can help out? Same with bracer enchants. Getting your gear in order is crucial to up any dps.

I really didn't mean to sound harsh to anyone, I went back and corrected a lot in my post I hope, I'm sorry, but it always gets me a bit iffy when people complain about meter padding when honestly there's nothing meter padding about that. And anyway a lot of dps are in fact also bad because they just don't do their max, they focus so hard on 1 job they completely forget the rest and that's how they die of fire cause "didn't see it" - or, when an add spawns even if there's a skull somewhere to SEE it and realize getting dots up on it will be greatly beneficial to both your dps as well as the raid, or just realize that a shadowfury right now on that other add would be an amazing contribution to the entire raid too. Just... you know. loosen up a bit, take some time to take in your surroundings and what's happening. I think that would greatly improve many players.

I don't think you're sounding harsh. But I think you're looking at it from the wrong way around. They are wiping due to not having enough dps on Sul. Spreading dots onto the other 3 will increase the warlock's dps on those, while decreasing it on Sul. Therefore this _IS_ "ghost" dps, as you so cleverly call it. Warlocks are the absolute kings on that fight (as demo anyway), because of the ability to multi dot the Doom.

It IS meter padding if they have all of their raid on him and he still empowers, meaning the damage on him (strictly him) is the issue. Under normal circumstances, I would advice multidotting too. But since they're wiping due to not being able to kill Sul before he empowers, multidotting will obviously be meaningless padding.

That is not entirely true. Keeping Corruption on multiple targets (if he's affliction) will increase soul shard generation, which will increase haunts, which will increase single target damage.

he should be playing affliction or if he has the Lei shen trinket (Normal/lfr/heroic), he should play demo.

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There's NOTHING meter padding about doing what you're being brought for: max dps. How you can argue that taking down HP from bosses that need to die is in any form or way useless is beyond me. "Doesn't make the differnece between a wipe and a kill?" well clearly if you're not chaincasting at this level likely it won't make the difference between a kill and a wipe either - but it makes it a hell of a lot easier if everyone's playing their classes properly no? If you're not multidotting, almost in all cases you're simply doing it wrong, and you can argue high and low but that's how it is - you're being brought for your dps capabilities and to do that, you WILL be multidotting, there's other classes much better suited to burn down a single dude on that fight than you are, heck an ele shaman would be better off being brought than you just because of their raid cooldowns, knockbacks, etc. Look at any top guild warlock even 10man and how they do it. If your overall dps is so lacking that you cannot kill Sul before he empowers (why is that necessary anyway? It's about the only moment where healers would have to press a button), then you simply have no place within the raid. On our heroic kill ages ago when we were undergeared I willingly sat out because our dps was overall too low to kill our primary target before empowering, therefore I no longer had an useful role in the raid and we were MUCH better off replacing me with someone who actually brought something useful to the raid - in this case we brought in someone who had a gazillion of useful tools that I could not offer there. Now with the gear we could probably easily do it and again I'd have an useful place in the raid. Use classes to their potential, and don't twist them around just to suit some tactic. That said, he's destro, and multidotting / rof on as many targets as possible WILL in fact undeniably increase his singletarget dps, so this discussion is kinda moot.

Meter padding is when you're LOSING useful dps to do ghost dps. Like rogues bladeflurrying council in toes. Yes, that's crap and useless. There's nothing useless about bringing bosses HP down, like rogue bladeflurrying on council in ToT. That's what he's best at, this kind of cleave, why would you have him in if not for that on this fight?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I'm assuming from armory this is normal mode. How we do normal is we bunch all bosses up, /care about the healing adds, cleave the hell out of them and profit. I'm healing those runs and I always HOPE we get sul empowered because there's nothing to heal otherwise... We do this on our shitty alts too, so maybe that's an idea. Honestly, the panic about sul is a bit over the top. He's really not that scary and it will take a lot of stress off your raid.

As for your lock's dps. There can be so much wrong. No multidotting would be one thing - and by the way, he should be draining/shadowburning the add at least for shards/embers by the way. But just playing random, not paying attention to procs, that's why most shitty warlocks are shitty. That's not something you fix overnight. That said, gearlevel doesn't say much. If his trinkets and weapons are crap, or has no setbonuses, he will be doing shit dps even if he has heroic shoulders, you know. Regardless, he should be doing more than he's doing. It's kinda hard to fix from here without seeing him play or anything, but lets give some general pointers:

- Rain of Fire; make sure he keeps this up on as many targets at the same time, but even if there's only one it should always be up. He needs to find a way to track RoF, as there's no UI function for this in default UI. So if there's two targets bunched up even if Sul is somewhere in Tokyo, he puts Rof on those two targets, to maximize ember generation.
- ABC. Always Be Casting, probably the biggest reason why casters have issues with dps (and melee too, really, think of those rets who take coffee breaks between their crusader strike and their exorcism proc): most often this manifests when you change spells: incinerate spam goes fine, then suddenly he has to switch and cast chaos bolt and by the time he found his button a second came by and went (this is not an issue exclusive to clickers by the way). Do that the entire fight and your dps will be crap.
- Fire and brimstone. If bosses are hugged up as they should, except if you really wanna do it properly the priestess, fire and brimstone at least those immolates (though yes I'd even say fire and brimstone a lot more than just that... :P). It gives shitloads of embers, and he can just spam chaos bolts away on Sul. Havoc another boss and incinerate away for more embers (or, gasp, chaos bolt to khazra for example, but maybe that's meter padding too... ). He must always maximize the ember generation for maximum (singletarget) dps.
- And lastly, use those chaos bolts only when he has a sexy proc or when he's about to cap embers. He has two half decent trinkets, make sure those bolts are at least aligned with those or with dark soul. That said, let him get Jade Spirit. Windsong is so incredibly crap compared to that. It's expensive but surely your guild can help out? Same with bracer enchants. Getting your gear in order is crucial to up any dps.

I really didn't mean to sound harsh to anyone, I went back and corrected a lot in my post I hope, I'm sorry, but it always gets me a bit iffy when people complain about meter padding when honestly there's nothing meter padding about that. And anyway a lot of dps are in fact also bad because they just don't do their max, they focus so hard on 1 job they completely forget the rest and that's how they die of fire cause "didn't see it" - or, when an add spawns even if there's a skull somewhere to SEE it and realize getting dots up on it will be greatly beneficial to both your dps as well as the raid, or just realize that a shadowfury right now on that other add would be an amazing contribution to the entire raid too. Just... you know. loosen up a bit, take some time to take in your surroundings and what's happening. I think that would greatly improve many players.

A nice wall of text that is avoiding the main answer to the question

lets put it in a extreme

If you have 5 affliction warlocks dotting everything would you be able to kill Council before Sul gets his empower?

No because by not focussing on a single target you're losing damage on the main target.

The fact that your group (or some random top guild warlock) can get away with such a self satisfaction gameplay just because your target doesn't heal himself or is a target that never dies is exactly the reason why doing this during the start on Council is shameful.

The only reason why you can lower your damage on the main target is because the rest of the group is making it up for you, and do you honestly believe that a group that hasn't killed Council has the gear and damage for 1 person to go around and give his 100% on the main target?

If I'm the raid leader and my group is struggling to kill the boss I would first kick the guy that's not helping in making the fight easier for the raid. And in this case I would look at the afflction warlock who is reducing his damage on the main priority target just so he can attack mobs that won't make the difference between a kill or not.

You as a dps aren't brought for your dps..because other people can do that as well.

You as dps are brought because your RL assume you will be helping in making the boss as easy as possible and making sure the boss dies, generally speaking this can involve in giving out healstones, helping with healing during high damage phases or just doing some damage.

You have to look at the perspective of a group that probably just started doing ToT and probably doesn't have the gear your raid has. Naturally they will have lower damage and in those kind of situations you can't have a person going around and doing 50% of his normal damage on the main target.

If you have 5 affliction warlocks dotting everything would you be able to kill Council before Sul gets his empower?

No because by not focussing on a single target you're losing damage on the main target.

The fact that your group (or some random top guild warlock) can get away with such a self satisfaction gameplay just because your target doesn't heal himself or is a target that never dies is exactly the reason why doing this during the start on Council is shameful.

The only reason why you can lower your damage on the main target is because the rest of the group is making it up for you, and do you honestly believe that a group that hasn't killed Council has the gear and damage for 1 person to go around and give his 100% on the main target?

If I'm the raid leader and my group is struggling to kill the boss I would first kick the guy that's not helping in making the fight easier for the raid. And in this case I would look at the afflction warlock who is reducing his damage on the main priority target just so he can attack mobs that won't make the difference between a kill or not.

You as a dps aren't brought for your dps..because other people can do that as well.

You as dps are brought because your RL assume you will be helping in making the boss as easy as possible and making sure the boss dies, generally speaking this can involve in giving out healstones, helping with healing during high damage phases or just doing some damage.

You have to look at the perspective of a group that probably just started doing ToT and probably doesn't have the gear your raid has. Naturally they will have lower damage and in those kind of situations you can't have a person going around and doing 50% of his normal damage on the main target.

Multidotting as affliction increaseas your single target dmg. You get a lot of shards back from having 4 targets dotted up. Plus you get full shards when the add spawns. If you do not multidot you gonna waste shards at that fight. And multidot doesnt mean you have to dot all 4 targets always. There are times where you wont be able to reach all 4 bosses since one is jumping here and there. As a thumb of rule this is what i do:

1.Start of the fight we pop hero. Prepot etc etc Hero, SS:SB all 4 bosses, put observer on Sul to attack non stop, open Doomguard on Sul.
2. Keep nuking Sul , when you get an abundance of shards and you will (unless extremely unlucky) keep roling dots with SS:SB on Frost boss aswell
3. Add spawn, IF you have 3 shards refresh your dots through SS:SB on Sul and Frost
4. Switch to add kill it , drain soul, full shards.
5. SS:SB all bosses, i start from the bitch, then Sul then Frost and the Gorilla if he is in reach.
6. Rinse and repeat, make sure to keep dotting Sul and at the same time not letting the empowered boss get empowered (balance your dps accordingly)
7. Sul dies send your observer to attack the frost boss. Proceed multidot.

But Sul isn't dying. Or at least not fast enough. Multidotting is encouraged on this fight for sure but going for super maximum DPS output is probably best left for farm nights. He should be doing everything he can to get the first kill right now, and for most guilds, that means putting everything he has into Sul at first. Sure, if he has excess shards, a tab-SB:SS-shift tab would be good, but the shards might as well be used to keep Haunt up as much as possible on Sul until the switch to Malak.

It's not strictly "ghost dps" but if it doesn't help avert the main problem the raid is having, I have to agree with those calling it wasted DPS. Once Sul goes down, it's a relatively easy fight and you can multidot to your heart's content, but when the fight is progression, you have to focus on what's causing the wipes.

All that being said, it sounds like the lock could improve his single target DPS anyways. Might as well have him go Destro, better single target at lower gear levels and can still cleave with RoF and Havoc.

Please the extra shards gained by putting corruption will be meaningless if all you do is switching targets

Maybe if you used a focus target macro and limited yourself to to empowerd (this is what I do with havoc until Sul is dead and then I just keep on switching focus target) but if your going to dot 4 targets then you won't really have time to use the extra shards on Sul.

Again you need to look at this from a perspective from a guild that hasn't killed the boss yet and probably doesn't have the gear yet that allows gameplay where a person only does 50% of his single target damage on Sul (50% is probably to high even).

I can't emphasise it often enough but Sul has to die ASAP, the moment a single boss dies the entire fight almost becomes a meaningless fight because you will reduce the raid damage and you won't get adds. And after Sul dies the only dangerous thing that you have to worry about is the reflect damage from the jumping troll, which isn't hard to counter if you use a cooldown and have your healers using a few raid cooldowns.

The thing about multidotting for flashy damage and using shard-regeneration as an excuse, is that while you might get more shards, you are spending less time casting Malefic into the haunt, which in the end makes the multidotting deal less damage to the primary target anyway.
Yes, you are more useful if you multidot, UNLESS you need to focus down a single target. Casting a SB:SoC to spread corruptions is a cast well spent, but SB:SSing or manually dotting 4 targets when you should be nuking 1 of them is incorrect play, knowing that your group is struggling to manage the dps on primary target. If you on the other hand are trying to achieve the maximum dps for meterwhoring/ranking purposes, then yes, this will give you the best result assuming the rest of your group is strong enough to complete the tactical tasks while you do your best to get a flashy number on recount.

I love this debate, I really do. But I also feel sorry for the poor guy's post which we derailed horribly.

They have to all die at some point. Multi-dotting reduces the total number of possessions in the fight, which in turn reduces the amount of damage the raid is taking toward the end of the fight.

As for helping the OP, honestly, just have him go Affliction on this one fight. This is the one fight in ToT that Destruction is relatively shitty on.

Yes they all have to die at some point. But the point in OPs post is the raid dies before they die due to not enough dps on Sul.

So your logic of "they have to die at some point" to justify multi dotting doesn't make sense. As others have already said, OPs raid has trouble downing Sul therefore everybody has to focus and help out on killing Sul instead of our individual damage. Raid>individuals.

Meh I don't think this is true. If you spend all your time dotting 3 other targets (with or without using shards) you will lose DPS on the main target, gaining some shards back won't make up for all the "lost" time/shards.
Now obviously if your raid DPS allows it it would be better to multidot everything, but if they struggle to get the main target down in time then just make less multidotting.

Jumping in here late, forgive me if the following has already been posted.

As a Destruction warlock with a 507 iLevel, I'm pretty close to the 'lock in question. If they're only doing 50-70k DPS, they're doing something terribly wrong. Single target DPS for Destro is higher than what your raider is achieving, and it's not going to get fixed by reforging. Rain of Fire should be kept up as much as he's able. He may start to run low on mana shortly before he's able to build his 4th ember for a concentrated burn, but that's only if he's unlucky with ember generation. Against 2+ targets, it shouldn't be an issue unless the RNG gods hate him.

The Destruction rotation isn't especially complicated, so really it comes down to their ability to generate embers and keep casting with minimal delay. Make sure that they have RoF up, they're not sitting around with dead time between casts, and are not wasting Backlash (conflag buff) on Chaos Bolt. If they're finding it difficult to cast continuously and do not have Kil'jaeden's Cunning, have them pick the talent up. There's really not a great reason to go for Mannoroth's Fury on this fight. The Frost King and Sul will be on one tank, the priestess will likely be too far away for MF's extra range to benefit, and the 4th troll will be out of range 90% of the time as well. The ability to cast while moving should allow him to focus on casting continuously.

Shadowfury is beneficial for this fight in that it makes it easy to manage Loa Spirits. Shadowfury itself will not contribute to your warlock's DPS, but it will give him a window in which he can apply Havoc to either the Loa or the current boss target. He can then cleave a Chaos Bolt to both targets. Havoc is perfect for this because Loa Spirits will spawn approximately every 30 seconds, which is the cooldown for Havoc. After hitting the Loa with a Chaos Bolt, be prepared to follow up with a Shadowburn. He likely won't be able to use it immediately after Chaos Bolt, but he will want to get that in so that he gets the embers from the kill.

The reforging looks to be fine. Crit is an acceptable avenue when taking a talent other than GoSac. Haste is problematic in that you can haste cap incinerates and be left with useless amounts of haste, and Mastery doesn't benefit the pet.

The Destruction rotation isn't especially complicated, so really it comes down to their ability to generate embers and keep casting with minimal delay. Make sure that they have RoF up, they're not sitting around with dead time between casts, and are not wasting Backlash (conflag buff) on Chaos Bolt. If they're finding it difficult to cast continuously and do not have Kil'jaeden's Cunning, have them pick the talent up. There's really not a great reason to go for Mannoroth's Fury on this fight. The Frost King and Sul will be on one tank, the priestess will likely be too far away for MF's extra range to benefit, and the 4th troll will be out of range 90% of the time as well. The ability to cast while moving should allow him to focus on casting continuously.

The reforging looks to be fine. Crit is an acceptable avenue when taking a talent other than GoSac. Haste is problematic in that you can haste cap incinerates and be left with useless amounts of haste, and Mastery doesn't benefit the pet.

Except if his guild is tanking the trolls surprisingly far away, I would do everything different sorry
RoF + MF should have just the size to hit both tanked trolls + the priestress, and often Kaz'rajin too. All the embers generated by RoF should allow him to spam Chaos Bolts / SB, making Mastery the best stat by far. I do 250k DPS on this fight as Destro (without any AoE on Sand adds, Sul dies before) with this setup, and could probably do more if I wasn't so sloppy.

I was struggling a lot on this fight as Affliction, as im usually a better "single target" type of player. I tried my offspec, Demonology, and suddently im the top dps. The tactic my guild uses is to have them started stacked up for hero, then spreading. During the time when we're stacked i go bananas with hellfire for a few seconds, then once demon power is full, i pop meta, immolation aura and the rest of the arsenal, nem focus on sul, making sure i always have immolation aura.

Once we're spread, i focus on Sul when off meta and on AoE when on meta.

Except if his guild is tanking the trolls surprisingly far away, I would do everything different sorry
RoF + MF should have just the size to hit both tanked trolls + the priestress, and often Kaz'rajin too. All the embers generated by RoF should allow him to spam Chaos Bolts / SB, making Mastery the best stat by far. I do 250k DPS on this fight as Destro (without any AoE on Sand adds, Sul dies before) with this setup, and could probably do more if I wasn't so sloppy.

Most groups I run with have the priestess too far away for MF to be of any use; they're on complete opposite sides of the circle pattern of the floor. Gives the DPS a chance to blow up the Loa safely. Then again you have to consider that the DPS are doing in the neighborhood of 100k dps. I assumed that since the OP's group is having difficulty, they are likely spacing the same.